GAMEBYTES: ‘In-between' parts are regretfully few

By Phil OwenSpecial to Tusk

Wednesday

Mar 19, 2014 at 5:00 PMMar 19, 2014 at 5:38 PM

As I write this, I'm sitting on a bus that is rolling across the Central Valley of California, and it is awesome. There's nothing really out here, and unlike the parts of Alabama where there's nothing really out there, I can actually see quite a long way.

As I write this, I'm sitting on a bus that is rolling across the Central Valley of California, and it is awesome. There's nothing really out here, and unlike the parts of Alabama where there's nothing really out there, I can actually see quite a long way.

As I'm sitting here, though, on my way to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I'm wondering why it is there aren't more parts of story games in which our heroes ride a bus across a long distance. That's a metaphor, by the way.

What I'm really talking about is the lack of truly "in-between" parts. Whenever I complain about games wasting our time with unnecessary extra combat or whatever, at least one commenter always tells me that extra stuff, which he or she inevitably refers to as an "in-between" part, is what separates games from other story media.

But those folks are usually talking about having to fight things during those parts, and that's not what I'm talking about at all. Going from one place to another and shooting bros along the way is not actually an in-between bit. Or at least it's only one kind of in-between part. But as Naughty Dog has shown us time and time again, players can be entertained by just walking around while our characters talk to each other, but of course even they get bogged down forcing us through combat situations that are longer than they need to be.

But, really, if so many video games are about a journey, then there should be more to the journey than just fighting through people or things that are trying to kill you. There should be some long bus rides, basically.

Sure, seven hours of riding on a bus would get old, just as it gets old in real life, but what I'm talking about is including actual journey stuff as you travel. It's not as if the Fellowship of the Ring was described or shown as fighting nonstop in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. And if that's what makes video games what they are (aside from the interactive element), then let's do some more riding around, walking around, driving around and so on. It would have to be paced appropriately, of course.

One of the best moments in "Grand Theft Auto 5" was when Trevor decided to head from his home in the desert over the Los Santos, and you have to drive across that game's quite large map. It's wonderful, and appropriate, but later missions that require the player to drive across the map tend to be less so. The lesson there is that you have to pick your spots so it doesn't become a real pain — always a concern — but honestly on our current repetitive video game combat trajectory we're probably running out of gas (pun intended).

The solution is to add more elements to mix into gaming experiences, something developers have always known they should do but always end up doing wrong, usually with endless varieties of side quests or collecting activities that aren't actually part of the core experience. Or when something new is incorporated into the main deal, it's used far too often, like eavesdropping missions in "Assassin's Creed" games.

So I'm not saying somebody needs to make a game about riding a bus, or to make a game about riding many buses. I'm saying riding the bus — this is a metaphor, remember — should simply be another tool in the developer toy box.

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